#still extremely extremely good and they build to form a narrative

[thebeautysurrounds]

I’ve been thinking a lot about how people’s reactions to certain queer shows and something I think we need to examine how we treat more ‘dark’ and ‘emotional’ shows versus more ‘happy’ shows in this case I’m gonna be talking about the “debate” between Young Royals and Heartstopper.

Firstly these shows exist in two different lanes, and draw in two different audiences and potential age ranges, in my opinion, Young Royals is for older teenagers (think juniors or seniors or someone who is about to graduate high school and is going into college) while Heartstopper is geared towards those who are just starting high school or in the middle of it and is in that transitional period of their lives. Obviously, if you are not in these age ranges you can still consume and enjoy these shows, But I want to discuss how people act like they both can’t exist and you can’t like both or both shows existing for a reason. I’ve never really been a fan of punching down or belittling queer media (unless it’s harmful) Queer media in all forms is still lacking (especially those mediums centering WLW relationships). That being said the debate of which show is better is honestly so tired.

For people who say Young Royals is so much better (don’t get me wrong it is an amazing show and by all means like whatever you want) but liking it more because it’s “darker and more realistic” compared to Heartstopper which is "much happier" and "unrealistic," To me is so disingenuous because firstly so what? campy shows that feature queer characters deserve to be unrealistic, What's wrong with being unrealistic? Queer media has been subject to the Burry Your Gays narrative for decades or extremely unhealthy tropes and storylines so what's so wrong with having storylines and shows that are unrealistic or extremely happy? (even though the themes in Heartstopper are realistic).

Have you thought about how that may be an intentional choice? Now bare with me here this may be my over-analytic brain at work but Heartstopper has more or less some of the same themes as Young Royals just shot in a very vibrant and colorful manner to showcase how happy and colorful young love is BUT if you actually have watched the show or read the graphic novels you would know the show and graphic novels cover some heavy themes.

SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT……

I want you to keep the song Pumped up Kicks by Foster the People in mind throughout this...I have a point I promise. Heartstopper is shot in a very poppy colorful way and in my opinion, symbolizes how when you’re young and in love everything feels warm, colorful, and vibrant. While Young Royals doesn't utilize this cinematic style they do use some form of vibrancy to convey tone and emotion. In Young Royals many of the scenes featuring Simon and Willhem's 'good moments' feature the sun especially shining on Simon when Willie is looking at him or whenever they are just in each other's company, this is especially prominent in the last scenes of the last two episodes of season 3.

So while people's criticisms of Heartstopper can be warranted (not saying you can't dislike the show) the comments that it's just so bubbly and bright just aren't true. The last season of Heartstopper saw multiple characters go through traumatic situations and it has been building up that way from the very first scenes in the first season of the show (but for the sake of time I'm only going to discuss both main characters in the two shows) Charlie not only is still struggling with being outed but is also battling with an eating disorder, this is foreshadowed throughout the first two seasons leading up to its inevitable blatant reveal when he is at dinner with Nick and his family where Nick starts to piece together why he is never hungry, passed out on the Paris trip and never finishes his food, which leads his to eventually research the signs of an ED. Nick is also still figuring himself out when it comes to his Bisexuality, while also dealing with the feelings of, feeling abandoned by his father, and having to reckon with the fact his brother is not supportive and dismissive of his sexuality and relationship.

Now before I said keep Pumped Up Kicks in mind that's because while this song has an upbeat, catchy tempo the song actually has a really dark undertone and meaning. So while Heartstopper is shot in a very vibrant colorway most of its characters and content of the show deal with dark themes and it's not all just a happy love story, and if the script for the next season follows the graphic novel closely, then we will see the characters go through even more challenges which also falls inline with the "darker" more emotionally message of the show. So to end this so it doesn't become a dissertation, both shows more or less have the same themes they just exist in two different lanes, I don't know why exactly people are fighting for one to be more valid than the other. When both can exist and be impactful to both or each audience, more queer shows need to exist where the characters are just happy and in love and I need y'all to unpack why you view more doom and gloom (for a lack of a better word) queer shows or movies are more valid than ones where the characters are just happy and have relatively in some aspects great experience when it comes to young love and figuring out one's identity. Sepreatlty why do you want these characters to suffer to find love? Why do characters have to go through something traumatic for their identity to be more valid and for you to relate and want to root for it more versus the latter?

Anyway, this was longer than I intended it to be but I just had to get my thoughts out there. TL;DR: Heartstopper and Young Royals are two great shows and if you think one is better than the other cause it has darker themes you are missing the point or probably objectively missed the dark undertones of the show, and one isn't more valuable than the other.

#young royals #heartstopper #queer shows #lgbtqia #queer media #rant #anaylsis #netflix #nick nelson #charlie spring #nick and charlie #simon eriksson #willhem #prince wilhelm #simon and wilhelm

[daily-hanamura]

Love your analysis of Yosuke’s character, it’s so detailed and fun to read! I’m kinda curious, what are your thoughts on his characterization in the fighting and dancing games?

Waaah thank you so much!! I'm glad you enjoyed them 💖

Oooh I actually LOVE his characterisation in p4d and p4au, probably because I think it brought out all my favourite parts of Yosuke and it really felt like Yosuke had matured a lot compared to his first appearance.

In P4A/U for example we see a lot of thoughts from other characters, and I really love that it's revealed how the others - not just Yu, but also Yukiko and Chie - rely on Yosuke a lot for emotional support, as the morale booster of the team, for direction when they don't know what to do, as the glue that keeps the group together, and it's so fantastic because it's so unlike how Yosuke sees himself. A lot of Yosuke's POV also reveals how much overthinking he does and how, despite his empathy in noticing when others are frustrated or worried, he feels like he doesn't do a very good job at cheering them up, even though when we look at their POVs we see that he did!! Both Yukiko and Chie call him up when they were worried about their friends going missing BECAUSE they feel better from talking to him!! Sorry but this particular factoid, this specific gap, sits in my head like a spitroast being rotated all the time because I cannot get over it. But he's trying though - we can see his motivations for the things that he says and how he tries to lighten the mood and yeah. It's great. I went into P4AU thinking it was going to be whatever but let me just say that was the game that triggered my single-minded obsession about Yosuke and the reason why this blog exists LOL like I was very much souyo and yosuke-brained aftert P4G but oh boy. P4AU tipped me over from obsessed to building this damn shrine for him :'D

He always laughs deprecatingly at himself even in the post p4g games, like in P4D - when he dances well he has a line that's like, "not such a disappointment after all" and it, again, really shows how he has such a poor perception of himself that he doesn't see his own good points, like the fact that he held out the second longest during their dance training, losing only to Rise, as pointed out by Yu. He's naturally talented and keeps up well with everyone elses dance style, but he doesn't really notice that either? Also a side thing I find hilarious/cute/endearing in P4D is also how Kanji exposes Yosuke's idol-loving-hours and Yosuke gets extremely embarrassed about it, because at his heart Yosuke does still like that kind of (somewhat) superficial thing, but he doesn't want people to know! It's a stark contrast to how he was earlier in P4G where he's more open about checking out girls (again, the whole "is this overcompensation" vs "is this a product of bro culture from his childhood friends" is a conversation that we can have) but it's a reflection of how that kind of talk tapers out a lot as the game progresses, and P4D was really consistent with the kind of growth that P4G gave Yosuke, instead of reducing him into that best-bro-friend stereotype, and for a game that was actually so short in narrative substance compared to P4AU, it was great. (I'm also convinced that P4D was trying to tell us Yosuke and Yu were dating but I'm not going to start on that again LOL)

And I think ultimately the reason why I feel like P4AU and P4D showcased a lot of growth for Yosuke is in his relationships with other people, because as much as Yosuke worries about how he's remained static, I think the fact that the others treat him with such respect (like when the first years and Teddie acknowledge that Yosuke is basically the team wrangler, and the difference between Yosuke at the start of P4G/in Magician compared to P4AU/D was someone who had become a lot more receptive about forming genuine relationships with other people instead of just protecting himself by surrounding himself with superficial relationships and yeah. yeah.

#asks #cosmic-stelar #is this anything coherent LMAO i feel a lot of thoughts #he's good with his queue

[doomsdaydicecascader]

In that case, then, the "death as a good ending because you're no longer in HS" is essentially a big lampshade hung on the nature of fiction itself? I can't help but feel like that has to tie into something less thematically self-referential, but I admit sometimes the comic gets really into its own narrative sandbox and that goes a little over my head. Thank you for the response though, and have a good weekend!

yeah! like, i think a lot of the purpose of homestuck is just to be self-referential. and i think hussie agrees! take this formspring answer for example:

So what is the idea? I don't feel like elaborating on it THAT much now, because I would probably type forever. Basically, it's about building an extremely dense interior vocabulary to tell a story with, and continue to build and expand that vocabulary by revisiting its components often, combining them, extending them and so on. A vocabulary can be (and usually is) simple, consisting of single words, but in this case it extends to entire sentences and paragraph structures and visual forms and even entire scenes like the one linked above. Sometimes the purpose for reiteration is clear, and sometimes there really is no purpose other than to hit a familiar note, and for me that's all that needs to happen for it to be worthwhile. Triggering recognition is a powerful tool for a storyteller to use. Recognition is a powerful experience for a reader. It promotes alertness, at the very least. And in a lot of cases here, I think it promotes levity (humor! this is mostly a work of comedy, remember.) Controlling a reader's recognition faculty is one way to manipulate the reader's reactions as desired to advance the creative agenda. In this case I'm not exactly sure what that agenda is all the time, and in truth there probably isn't any serious agenda there. This story, though at times seeming diabolically put together, is still pretty light reading after all. if anything I'm just striving for a certain pitch in density with the all the multithreaded symbolism and endless internal reference. Think of it as a symphony and everything I've referred to as belonging to a vocabulary are really just notes, working together in a really complicated harmonic structure.

this is a thing stories already do, building a vocabulary out of plot beats and callbacks, characters facts and themes, i've described storytelling before as "like building a pyramid and then slowly, piece by piece, taking it apart" - it's sometimes used derogatorily, like when a callback is a little bit too obvious, to be an obvious callback in the third act (see: crazy ball in psycho goreman, the thing that sparked this line of thought originally)

but homestuck takes this idea really, really far, in that it will actively redefine what these beats mean solely for the joy of doing so, and so you can only really trust what a story beat means in the context of what it means in homestuck. i think its really cool. the only thing ive ever seen that does something similar is petscop, it's a very cool thing to do that i dont think a lot of people really catch on to, and it can create something that lasts even if people dont understand why it works the way it does

[ishcliff]

If its ok whats your biggest peeve with modern persona

this is going to sound so unbearable, i think, but Hear Me Out

to sum it up, i just think the writing is extremely careless and sloppy, and the formula is lazy.

i think i can safely say the only modern persona game i consider myself a fan of is persona 3. haven't played reload, but i love what i have seen and also love FES and portable basically equally. but i think the existence of persona 3 as a good game thoroughly debunks the merit of "auteur theory" because it's only in spite of the misogynistic-tinted ineptitude of the two celebrated/recognizable directors that the experience is so memorable. imagine admitting in a book with your name on it that you could never be friends with a woman without getting romance or sex out of it, and saying this is why you made your protagonist a serial cheater. LOL

this type of careless attitude lacking self-awareness kind of permeates every modern entry. a controversial take of mine that i will live and die by is that the ending of persona 3 is sad because a depressed child with the power of the entire universe uses it to kill his/herself because it would make the lives of everyone around him/her better. i understand the intention of messianic imagery and mythology to it, but it is again just sort of a symptom of that carelessness that i associate the modern entries with.

then, persona 4 takes the narratively focused mechanics of persona 3 and makes it a series staple, thus weakening the entire point of why the calendar/daily life sim exists for persona 3 on a narrative level. i understand this was mostly done for crunch related reasons, but i would argue that makes this happening even worse.

but, at the very least, persona 4 does more with the calendar system tangibly than persona 5 vanilla does, where you essentially clear the main story in a single day and then get messages from everyone saying "yeah we gotta wait for (date) huh." having a major character be potentially in, essentially, a pointless coma for a month is egregiously stupid, among other narrative choices. i cannot speak for p5r because i have not played it, but persona 5 was so middling that i think i would have to lose a bet to go through the main game again just for a few hours of good content.

persona 3's messaging is at least cohesive enough to present a thesis: life is worth living even throughout the pain, so seize every day because one day it will end. but even then, that carelessness is still present with the point i raised above as well as the entirety of 10/4. the aftermath of shinjiro dying actively weakens the narrative because he specifically gave up on his own life – which, again, i understand is a gesture of gifting a future to someone in spite of the fact that even children will one day inevitably die, but shinjiro also just wanted to die himself, which is... exactly why nyx and erebus exist. yet his death is said to be "how it should be", and akihiko evolves his persona by developing even more maladaptive coping mechanisms than he already had. this isn't to say that shinjiro should have lived per se (though i do like p3p's act of quite literally giving him more time in the form of the pocket watch), but rather that the aftermath of his death should have been written from a different angle. his death is sad precisely because it was unnecessary.

persona 4 has absolutely fucking nothing to say. it makes no sense. messages about facing the parts of yourself you deny and overcoming the ideas others project onto you just mean absolutely fucking nothing when accepting their social conditioning as their "true self" is the conclusion of just about everyone. the only exception is fucking teddie, who is the only party member who has an arc that doesn't completely contradict the messages the game is allegedly trying to send out. you can also probably guess my opinion on the bigotry. the symbology makes no cohesive sense mythologically speaking, and the build up to the main antagonist... also doesn't make much sense. not as in it's difficult to understand, but because it's not fleshed out very well and the tie-ins to japanese mythology and folklore may as well be intangible because of how distant they are. it's just bad writing. idk what else to even say about it that isn't "this is a badly written game" over and over again.

persona 5's writing isn't exactly bad as much as it is overwhelmingly lazy. for example, what better way to rebel against "the establishment" by... recruiting a "good billionaire" into your party. it wants the aesthetics of punk without any of the work in the framing of the conflict. it turns real-world political debates into yet another war against god. worst of all, it's just boring (to me). i got nothing out of it. like, i don't even hate the game enough to go into even more detail, because that would imply some kind of passion. which is probably the worst thing i can say about anything, tbh.

so yeah. just laziness and shallowness that permeates every aspect of the presentation tbh.

(general disclaimer that i don't have any interest in debating at all LMAO i'm just yelling at clouds)

#i really am a fan of persona though i promise #atlus critical #persona critical #persona 3 spoilers #persona 4 spoilers #persona 5 spoilers #asks

[look-how-they-massacred-them]

Preliminary Poll

Lotor

Submission reason:

It's been a hot while but I'm pretty sure he had a sudden personality switch and was then left to die & the show then focused on redeeming his abusive mom (I support womens wrongs usually but come on. That was just in poor taste)

It's been a while since I watched it, but the general gist was that, though it seemed like Lotor was heading for a Zuko-esque redemption arc, the show ended up retroactively revealing that he'd done some unforgivable war-crime level stuff (and then killed him off).

They spent all that time building him up as a sympathetic abuse victim who contrasts with the more outright evil antagonists, only to randomly make him crazy and kill him off unceremoniously at the end of a season. Then they had the absolute audacity to give a redemption arc to his neglectful evil scientist mother. The disrespect!!!

When he was first introduced, he was this sort of anti-villain seeking to supplant his shitty comatose dad and reform the Galra Empire. He wanted to make things better for Galra-Alien hybrids like himself, even having a badass team of warrior women as his primary followers, and stopped at nothing to attain that goal. When Emperor Zarkon awoke and declared Prince Lotor a traitor to the empire, Lotor joined the Voltron team as an ally, forming a truly gorgeous relationship with Princess Allura along the way. Like, they had actual chemistry, with narrative parallels and some really good body language to show the interest was indeed mutual and affectionate. However, as soon as he killed his dad for the Voltron team, the narrative took a nosedive and turned Lotor into a people-harvesting madman seeking to take over the universe as an even worse tyrant than Zarkon, leading to him getting killed off unceremoniously. Lotor was probably the most deeply nuanced character the show had ever approached, alongside Shiro, and even then they completely dropped the ball and went back on all that character development, seemingly just to clear the way for Allura to briefly share a sauceless relationship with Lance before getting killed off herself, and give the sympathetic villain role over to his abusive mom Haggar, who is significantly less relatable and much more shitty than he ever was before they retconned him into being evil.

Propaganda:

He's an extremely tall (like 7 feet I'm pretty sure??) purple space elf with Legolas hair. Draw your own nsfw conclusions from that. Also he has daddy issues. And mommy issues.

Lotor is great! I was a huge fan of him during his first season or two. He definitely operated in a moral grey area that involved a lot of underhanded tactics, but he still remained a sympathetic character in his motivations (and had one of those classic tragic backstories that always makes you want good things for a character). He led a team of four female generals where all of them, including Lotor himself, were societal outcasts. It originally seemed like he placed a lot of faith in them, and there was a really cool ""power of friendship but evil"" vibe. Lotor even switched sides and started making friends with the protagonists, so I think towards the end most people were guessing he'd get some sort of redemption arc. I remember watching the episode where they revealed his space-war crimes and killed him off and going. huh. that was like. a fever dream, right? They didn't actually just turn this cool morally complex character into an unforgivable monster, right???? Like, I'm generally really cool with bad writing and iffy characterization--that's what fic is for!--but Lotor's whole thing was on another level. He got run through the blorbo blender fr

Princess Allura probably counts for this too, considering how she got red-stringed into dating Lance after seeing her last boyfriend go nuts and die, and then got dragged into a heroic sacrifice with very little setup. Also, Lotor's whole arc before the switcheroo was broadly seen as a good allegory for children from interracial relationships being isolated from both of their parents' cultures, as well as a child growing up under abusive circumstances overcoming their abuse and building a life for themselves above their upbringing. It could have been so good. But they seemed far more interested in this hollow tragic villain setup for Haggar and this similarly lifeless dating arc with Lance than going through with the better option.

#look how they massacred them poll #look how they massacred my boy #lotor #vld lotor #voltron lotor #vld #voltron legendary defender #voltron

[musclesandhammering]

The #GirlBoss movement in the MCU is extremely pseudo-feminist.

I could be totally off-base with this, but has anybody else noticed that here lately the mcu has had a slight pattern of making a few female characters ridiculously overpowered as well as turbo-hyped by the narrative and marketing…

This specifically includes Wanda, Carol Danvers, and Sylvie.

I’m in particular talking about how all 3 of them had far less time for character exploration and strength build-up than the majority of the other more powerful heroes, had fairly bland and uncreative personalities compared to the other more powerful heroes (Wanda was coddled by the narrative and not allowed to have any ownership in her wrongdoings which would’ve made her more complex, Carol was a victim of the “having the same arrogant attitude as the douchebro male characters is all it takes to make a Strong Female Character(TM)” writers’ mentality, and Sylvie with mary sue-ed to hell), and were generally made more about the cool powers and ‘oooh such a badass’ moments and the aesthetic than the actual depth.

My point is… they’re all so shallow and performative. It’s like the (mostly male) writers looked at the female character and scoffed and said “ok there’s no way this lady’s gonna become a fan fave on her own- we have to help her. We have to give her a boost. I have zero faith in women being able to gain popularity by their own merit (because who’d be interested in a woman, ammiright?), so we can’t just give her a compelling backstory and let that be it. We have to make sure she has the most tragic backstory of anyone on screen at any given time, and we have to make sure the audience knows it! We can’t just give her a specific set of powers and depict them in an interesting and unique way. We have to make her stronger than any other character she’s going to share screen time with and we have to have her flaunt her powers every ten minutes to remind the audience how strong she is! We can’t just make her intelligent in her own way and give her witty banter with the male characters. We have to make sure she makes them look like idiots and condescends them as frequently as possible so the audience knows it! We can’t just flesh out her morals and let her get things wrong sometimes. We have to make it so she’s always in the right and the audience should always be on her side! And even when she does something wrong, we have to make sure the audience knows that it wasn’t really her fault and she still has the moral high ground! That’s the only way we’ll ever get people to like her as much as the main male characters!!”

It’s just…. This is just rank with a lack of confidence in women. They approach the idea of having women front and center with equal parts skepticism and greed. They’re so out of touch with what women want in superhero films and just what women want in general. They fall into the trap of thinking feminists want everyone to know that girls are actually superior to guys, when in reality we just want to be treated with the respect and humanity and agency guys have always been treated with.

And by creating these female characters the way they do (making sure they’re not equal but decidedly better than the male ones, making sure they’re nearly infallible strength-wise, making sure they’re never allowed to be held accountable for mistakes) they literally defeat that whole point. They’re being extremely counterproductive to what feminists are actually trying to do, because they aren’t actually interested giving women genuinely good representation- they’re just interested in pandering to Twitter stans and casual female fans who form their opinions based on a first glance and girls who are so starved for rep that they’ll praise movie-makers for serving up rank crumbs.

They give us female representation but not really, just like they give us queer representation but not really, and like they give us poc representation but oftentimes not really…. Because (surprise surprise) the multi-billion dollar corporation does not actually give a shit about minority issues.

#this should not come as a shock to anyone #but unfortunately #I know a good many people who would be shocked to chagrin #young women and young lgbt folks and young poc stop idolising anything that gives you a crumb challenge #Omg Marvel Gave Us All These Badass Women!!! #babe most of those women are cardboard cutouts #Omg Marvel Gave Us A Confirmed Queer Character!!! #babe that was one vague sentence and then they did their best to retcon it by putting him in a heteronormative relationship with himself #Omg Marvel Gave Us These Cool POC Characters #babe most of them are side characters who get 3 lines tops 2 of which are used to build up the white characters #I’m just…. so tired #people are so shallow #negativity #marvel negativity #fake feminism #pseudo feminism #anti wanda maximoff #anti Captain marvel #anti sylvie #anti marvel #marvel meta #marvel discourse #argue with a wall #might do a longer post on this later idk

[centrally-unplanned]

I felt strong kinship to Mekkah for his latest video criticizing Fire Emblem's support system; he did a good job verbalizing my thoughts. To outline the Ash-version of this take, Fire Emblem in the Game Boy era (when modern supports were born), had simple plots, from a sheer "quantity of text" standpoint. A lot of that was convention; a lot of it was limitations of technology. The supports were simple to match, and so they worked fine as a way to bolster the characters and connect narrative choices (who you like) to gameplay (on-field bonus for affection). The downside here is that those supports are about the two characters; they aren't connected to the plot of the game nor the actions on the field. This is fine when, as in FE7, the number of supports a unit has is capped at 2-3 people and unlocking them is hard. The downside is not observed.

Fast forward to Three Houses and the same system is breaking under the weight of modern, 40+ hour, long-form plot concepts and modern player demands of flexibility and customization. Every character can unlock every rank with every other character (mostly), unlock happens trivially, but this 20x quantity of text is still divorced from the actual plot. They are, by design, required to be repetitive fluff in some way. In Three Houses this was taken to the extreme as supports were over twice as long on average as the ones in Awakening/Fates, with even *less* ability to connect to the plot given the branching, timeskip nature of it. It was extremely common in that game to complete a level and have unlocked 5-6 new supports (aka reading text with no gameplay) that would on net take 20+ minutes to complete, none of which has connected consequences with anything else. Engage at least cut the support length back down, but its a band-aid solution.

Support ballooning also reduced its gameplay incentive - in Awakening at least, where pair-up is absurdly broken, you did have some support specialization. But in Fates/Three Houses/Engage (to a lesser extent) support bonus are largely aura-based, provide flat bonuses, and are more-or-less equal between characters. Given how many you develop it quickly becomes the case that each unit in your squad has a B~ rank with every other unit; meaning you can just send them wherever on the map, and they will probably get a similar-ish bonus no matter what. So you stop paying attention to them.

Now some of this is certainly inherent to how games have evolved, but I don't want to give the games a full pass here; there are a lot of changes they could make to mitigate this problem (branching supports, more story-progression-locks, integration of sidequests, etc) and they just aren't doing that. I definitely don't want the games to ditch their "dating sim" elements, the building of bonds alongside teams is a core differentiator of Fire Emblem. But overall I think fixes are a stopgap to just ditching the idea of support convos altogether, which the games should pursue. With the much-larger stories integrating the characters into that story directly is much easier, and Fire Emblem has a lot more non-combat gameplay mechanics these days it could use as a base for a new relationship system (As opposed to those simply being ways to grind relationship points for the - otherwise completely separate - support system). But I would take change in either direction for sure - its all about execution anyway.

#Youtube

[qqueenofhades]

Hiii! I hope this is not too random but you always have such good advices and it's always interesting to hear your opinion about different things.

So, I have this idea for a serialized web-novel that I really want to stick with, write it and actually publish it. But I'm afraid that I'm not good at writing and I'm not sure how to improve. As an academic/teacher who writes fiction, is there anything in particular you would recommend? Like the list of books?

Also, everyone says you can be good at only one thing so you should invest your time in mastering that one thing, otherwise you are going to always be mediocre, Jack of all trades. I have BA in Philosophy, work as a video editor and dream of writing that particular story. Am I too over the place? I thought that I could connect writing to philosophy as there are a few philosophers who write fiction, and connect it to video editing bearing in mind that video editing is also a form of storytelling and can be connected to scripting, in a way.

Ideally, I'd want my story to be in a comics formats, but then I'd also have to learn drawing, which I would absolutely love to do, but then will I be turning into mr. Jack even more? Lol.

First off, my chillun, I am here to safely inform you that the idea of "jack of all trades, master of none," thus implying that it's stupid to do a lot of things when you could devote your time to Doing This One Thing Only, is a pile of crap. What is life even FOR, if not to try new things, experiment, see what you like, make mistakes, and learn how to do it better? Especially when it comes to art??? It is the primal and timeless impulse of human beings in all ages of the world to make art, the end. Someone who has written a "bad" story or drawn a "bad" picture is still 100x more of an artist than some yokel who feeds stolen art into an AI algorithm and presses a button. They have made something original and creative and maybe it's not as good as those who have been doing it more or for longer, but WHO CARES? You can try again! You can laugh it off or pretend it never existed or whatever, but honestly, you should NOT be ashamed.

This whole "do only one thing and don't waste your time with unproductive side hobbies" idea is also an extremely capitalist conceit: you should spend your time being Financially Productive At Your One Skill, and not doing things that bring you joy solely because they bring you joy (even if not money). It presupposes that the only purpose of life is to be generating Profit at all times, which you can't do if you're not "good," etc etc nonsense. (Clearly, I have strong feelings about this.) So if you want to learn how to write and draw in order to make a web comic, you should do that! It doesn't matter if this is totally unrelated to anything you've done before. You don't need to justify it to anyone. You can just go "you know what, I want to do this" and do it!

That said, if you want to produce it to a publishable level in a reasonable timeframe, in this case it might be good to partner up with a person and/or persons who have more experience than you. You can be the storyboarder/show-runner/ultimate mastermind, but you can also reach out to writers and artists who have already practiced to the level needed, so you don't have to spend years becoming good enough (whatever your definition of that might be) to produce a quality product. You have experience with video editing and production; great! You can find someone else whose skills enhance and collaborate with yours, and who can do something that maybe you can't. But if you practice in the meantime, you'll understand more about how it works, what you want to do, and how to translate that into narrative/art form.

As ever, my only advice for people who want to learn how to write better is a) write, and b) read. Find writers whose style you enjoy, whose particular technical skills you want to emulate (is it character development? World-building? Plot twists? Smooth prose? All of the above?) and see how they do it. Sure, there are plenty of writing books out there who purport to tell you How To Do It The Right Way, but honestly, I don't think I've ever read them. I started writing around the age of 7 and worked at it ever since (along with a lot of reading, so yes). Some people might benefit from a more structured/guided approach, so if you think that sounds like something you want to see, even if it's just someone putting words down on a page about the basic technical craft of writing, then I do encourage you to check it out. But if at any time you go "eh, this doesn't feel like my style" or "I don't want to do it that way" or "this isn't quite what I'm looking for," you can shut that book and try something else. This, too, is entirely fine.

I realize that for many of us, writing is the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, and it's hard to share it if you feel like it's less than perfect, but at some point, you will also need to start doing that. The nice thing about fandom is that we are all amateurs (i.e. not being paid for it, not necessarily "bad," since I have seen plenty of professionally published books that make me go YIKES), and there's generally a forgiving and supportive atmosphere. If you want to write about two blorbos kissing or not kissing (as the case may be) or whatever else, chances are there is someone out there who wants to read that story, and they will enthusiastically respond to you about it. Strangers who offer unsolicited criticism on fanfic are obviously dicks, but there are also beta readers, people who read your writing to support you and also suggest what can be made better or more polished or otherwise better. So if you think that's a feedback structure you might benefit from, put your toes out and see what kind of response you get.

Anyway, this is all to say: write, draw, make art, do it badly, do it again, you'll get better, and don't feel like you have to excuse it or explain why. In the case of this particular project, if you have a strong artistic vision but not the technical skills to execute it to the level you want, consider reaching out to people who DO have those skills and might be interested in collaborating with you. Write a lot. Read a lot. Find what works for you. And have fun.

#anonymous #ask

[aikoiya]

LoZ: TotK - Zonai Tech Oddity

I noticed something about a lot of the Zonai tech in the game.

A lot of it isn't really built to last.

Sure, the constructs & ruins & such, but the commonly-used devices & even the weapons are extremely fragile.

A Steward Construct even mentions that the devices are meant to be disposable. That they're this way by design.

As for the weapons, the descriptions have never brought up them being decayed... to my knowledge... So, it just seems like they're simply built flimsy.

Now, from a gameplay perspective, it makes perfect sense for them to break. They'd break the game otherwise. But from a narrative, worldbuilding standpoint it brings up questions about sustainability.

And I know, sustainability is brought up a lot these days & it's probably getting old for a lot of you, but I feel like it's apropos in this specific situation.

They basically mass produce devices that are designed to only work for a short time, not even a full day really, before breaking & I can't help but feel like that is a little concerning.

Admittedly, they disappear into the aether after being used up to it doesn't create trash, but it just doesn't seem sustainable. Like, how fast does this stuff form exactly?

Is it a flaw of Zonai engineering or a consequence of using Zonaite itself I wonder?

It'd certainly be interesting if Hylians just have a knack for long-lasting machinery & durable weaponry.

I mean, we know for a fact that Hyrule's weaponry are supposed to be all-but indestructible provided they're properly maintained, not overtaxed, & not covered in Gloom. Because, not only is that how most similar weapons IRL are, but before the Wild series, 99% of other weapons you get in the other games didn't break down really at all & that was through entire games. Hell, the Kokiri Sword stuck around for 2 full games, OoT & MM. Admittedly, it got replaced the 1st time, but it still stuck around for the long haul.

Like, there's the Biggoron Sword & the upgrade for the Kokiri Sword in Majora's Mask, but you eventually get an upgrade for the upgrade that makes it permanent & only the upgrade broke, not the sword itself. And, to be fair, the Biggoron Sword is of Goron make. (Though, that would indicate that Goron methods aren't as good as Hylian methods, which I honestly find very odd considering you'd think that the Gorons would be the equivalent to Hyrule's dwarves.)

So, this indicates that the method itself was still being perfected. If anything, these exceptions seem to prove the rule that weapons of Hylian/Sheikah make are extremely durable.

Not to mention, I just can't help but think that having your shit just randomly break over & over again & need to be replaced repeatedly, would not only be inconvenient, but downright infuriating! Especially when you're in the middle of something important!

Though... I suppose that the shortness of their use & the finality of their destruction when used up could also explain why Hyrule didn't seem to have paddleboats or trains or, fuck, space ships 10-20,000 years ago.

I mean, it's certainly one way to have advanced technology in your medieval fantasy setting while keeping it from going full sci-fi fantasy.

Edit: Also, it just occurred to me... How the fuck did the Gerudo not just get wiped the eff out? The Zonai must not've been as advanced as they seemed because have you SEEN some of the shit people have been building with their tech?

The Zonai had the tech necessary to make what would amount to mini divine beasts!! And anyone with the creativity to do so & the tenacity to figure out how the pieces go together could've done it!

They could've wiped the Gerudo off the face of the planet!

Sure, maybe they couldn't have killed Ganon so long as he had the Secret Stone, but at least there'd be no future Ganons to deal with other than the spite-fueled ghost of the one they were currently dealing with.

I'm saying this from a theoretical military standpoint, not because I actually would've wanted them to, mind.

And, obviously, this would've had it's own consequences if they did. For instance, the Sage of Lightning would've likely sworn vengeance, but that's not the point.

The point is, they could've decimated Ganon's armies like they were nothing.

That scene where Rauru Tri-Beam Cannoned the Molduga with the help of Wifey & Zelda?

Epic, but entirely unnecessary.

He could've had a mobile hot air balloon with cannons pointed down take the Molduga out & he might not've incited Ganon to kill Sonia & steal her stone.

Or at least put it off a bit longer.

Like, despite the shortness of the Zonai Devices' life expectancies, they were Hella powerful when you used them correctly.

LoZ Wild Masterlist

#loz #totk #legend of zelda #tears of the kingdom #zonai #zonai technology #zonaite

[zorilleerrant]

I want to preface this by saying: everything is canon unless it's not. If you want to throw out pieces of canon that just make you uncomfortable or unhappy, or keep ones that don't make a whole lot of sense but bring you unbridled joy, go ahead! But I've seen people react to what is and isn't canon in odd ways that confuse me, so I wanted to make a breakdown of the different types of canon. Not how canon something is, but why.

Cultural Setting. The broadest type of canon, this includes both time and place (of publication usually, but older bits of design or writing will slip in here). Characters are assumed to have certain traits by default, and it will only be remarked if characters deviate from those traits, so they may make vague references to such a trait without it meaning anything, even if it kicks off story elements. Worldbuilding will assume types of places work types of ways, and plot elements will assume things that happen a lot or in a certain way. A lot of this is very specific to time or place! A lot of it is also ethnocentric and makes assumptions about "everyone" and "always".

Genre Setting. Also a fairly broad type of canon, this is where the story takes place within a genre dialogue. There are elements of genre - especially subgenre - that audiences expect to see, and without a good reason to exclude them, creators will typically put them somewhere in the story without assigning any particular meaning to them. Likewise, there are elements that are very marked if they're included without an explanation, so unless the creators have a reason to make those elements prominent, they usually won't include them even if they might have worked well in a different genre. Authors who aren't very familiar with the genre may guess wrong, and authors who are extremely familiar may specify subgenre in a way that's not as legible to their readers.

Social Position. This is a basic part of character design. The most common place for this to impact setting is through a character's work, home, or social life. The most common place for it to impact worldbuilding is through politics of oppression. It will probably only impact plot through person or place. This includes things like class, race, gender, sexuality, disability, religion, age, profession, etc. Some of these will be stereotypes or incorrect assumptions, but they intend to reflect common experiences of people in that category, and are tied to the category rather than the character specifically. They form a basis to create a more specific character, while still acknowledging how they see the world.

Character Archetype. Like the genre setting, different archetypes carry different expectations with them. These can include skillsets, attitudes, relationships with other characters, modes of speech, types of backstory, etc. There's usually a fair amount of wiggle room, which may be more or less depending on genre, but there tends to be a lot that a creator has to include or can't include if they don't want those traits to be marked. These also exist in plot - the stock plot, or the recognizable adaptation - but it's easier to see on the surface in a way characterization isn't usually when it's done well. There are archetypes of worlds, too, but they're usually covered by the genre setting if you're not talking specifics of worldbuilding. Background characters may only have this part.

Specific Traits. These are the things that make that story so unique. Traits given to the character to build up their personality, the place to create the feel of it, the plot to give it twists and turns. Obviously these don't belong to any one narrative exclusively, but they help differentiate even very formulaic narratives and give them (and the characters) personality.

Now, what do you do with this? Well, you put things in these different groups to help you create your AUs. If you change the time period, region, subculture, etc. you want to figure out which parts of the story were crafted as part of the first group. If you want to swap genres - and this can be very important in crossovers - you should look at what's tied to genre. If you want to change or delve further into a character's gender, race, age, job, etc. then you should figure out what components are tied to that. And if you're giving the character a new role in the story, you should look to their archetype to see what traits to swap out. The rest is probably stuff you should keep to make sure the character (or setting or plot or whatever you're fiddling with) is still recognizable.

Do keep in mind that a lot of this isn't consciously thought through or separated like this, and creators often have a feel for combining these different elements and do it intuitively. So there's nothing wrong with just winging it, or doing something because you feel like it makes sense. But if you're stuck on how to change what you're changing, maybe it's because you're thinking of it as part of a different category, and changing it too much or too little to suit the needs of your own creation!

#look i said something #writing advice

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2024-01-15

back in the saddle

Listening: The Skeleton Dance, a single from Perennial which I clicked on solely because the title and band name go together so well.

Short and sweet post-punk snippet. Go check out their other albums, probably? I'm still going through those too.

Reading: New Murderbot, which I am very glad to say I actually liked. I did not really like Network Effect because it was too all over the place and felt more like three murderbot novellas in a trench coat. System Collapse is much more tightly written thing that actually fits its length.

Two big things going on that make it work: a strong focus on Murderbot having a hard time dealing with trauma because it refuses to acknowledge it is like a human in any way. Murderbot not wanting to be human and refusing all attempts to characterize it like a human are such strong parts of its personality that it's interesting to see it get hit by that revolving door.

The other thing is very tightly constraining the tools and environment. Murderbot has strict enough rules and solid enough explanations that mechanical limitations build well into actual narrative tension. Murderbot only having two camera drones and no armour is responsible for a solid half of the tension of the book, and controlling how much access it has to other systems is a big driver of the ebb and flow of that tension.

Murderbot as a series has such a delightful economy of worldbuilding. There's the entire implied world of hyperintelligent bots existing just out of view, things on par with Peri hiding in systems and allying with a select group of humans because it likes them. The whole human/construct/bot divide is repeatedly shown to be extremely blurry, which is fun because Murderbot treats it as unimpeachable truth.

Also one of the handful of book series where I read about some little thing and search for parts at my electronics supplier.

I have just started Hannah Ritchie's new book Not The End Of The World which is a bookified form of her general research on "things are getting better, there's a long way to go, but fatalism is not only unproductive it's incorrect". Having already read a lot of her work it retreads that a lot, and if you see a long patch of text without any citations you can skip over it, but it is handy to see all the numbers laid out.

Ritchie's research seems more correct than not most of the time, so while I do sometimes go "oh come on" at specific claims or propositions, it's generally interesting and worthwhile if you care about the data behind modern climate change and how it relates to economic and technological development.

It is really funny how much of climate discussion really does boil down to "for the love of god stop burning things."

Watching: Noah's Shark at Bad Movie Night, a Polonia Brothers movie about the curse laid on the secret fourth son of Noah when he brought a demonic third shark on the Ark. Yeah.

It's on YouTube in its entirety.

There's something funny about the fact that the Polonia team have put out so many movies that even their bad movies have flashes of clear competence in writing. Some genuinely good banter in between everything else going on in this movie.

Playing: Briefly picked up Dark Souls long enough to get to the Capra demon, but I have not tried to fight it yet.

Making: 3D printing a microphone holder for Dark Souls recordings because I did like editing those supercuts and the bad audio was killing me. Had a good time experimenting with dovetails and other sliding joints. Learning a lot about OnShape, especially poking at the Assembly system for the first time and finally using it enough to start picking up the shortcuts in earnest.

Tools and Equipment: Hey did you know that oranges are one million times easier to eat if you just cut them into slices and then peel the skins off. I have basically not eaten oranges for years because you can't peel them easily by hand. Oranges are great. Just cut them into quarters and go to town.

#last monday of the week #Bandcamp #Youtube

[invested-in-your-future]

can't do much since they said remnant has no oppression

See that's extremely limiting and kind of goes against what I think RWBY themes are/should be.

You can still do inclusive, but flawed Remnant. The "Remnant is inclusive" just needs to come with a very big "but".

The way I see Remnant, if it was done properly, is as "a world/civilization that is trying to change".

The Great War shook the world and there are a lot of genuinely well meaning people trying to do genuinely good things in terms of inclusivity and equal rights. A lot of people, Ozpin included, genuinely want to do something good and to avoid history repeating. Unlike the real world, there are some people in power that genuinely see the need for a more inclusive Remnant.

But Remnant is also like a house of cards - its a delicate and fragile society built around an ongoing apocalypse and shaken by infighting and death and ancient conflicts. Just because its trying to change doesn't mean its changing fast enough. And a lot of places, institutions, etc DON'T want to change. Oppressive systems NEVER want to change nor allow themselves to be demolished. They shift forms, they survive, they adapt, they deny.

I think the key to building a better Remnant Without Gods, story-wise, is accepting that just because key characters WANT something to be, doesn't mean the setting itself can budge. Being powerful, having power or even being ageless does not mean being perfect or being omniscient and omnipresent. In a Remnant Without Gods, humans, no matter how ancient, are still just humans. There are no higher beings to guide them to right decisions, no reality-altering relics to fulfill their will. And Ozpin, no matter who he is, is also blind to a lot of issues around him.

In such Remnant, Huntsman Academies are a genuine attempt at creating a demilitarized institution of training people that can fight monsters without being bound by specific Kingdom's whims, but is it a successful one?. And while there might be some genuine effort for inclusivity and progressiveness in the schools, racism, bullying, toxicity, etc still slip through, be it unintentionally or sometimes intentionally. Poverty, classism and bigotry still roam the streets of the Kingdoms no less than Grimm do. Kingdoms might proclaim inclusivity and civil rights as priorities, but the cogs inside the system still grind people to dust. And "we are trying" does not really do anything for the people whom the system has failed. And no matter what Ozpin or the Academies would WANT the huntsmen and huntresses to be, it still such an ambiguous concept that can mean wildly different things to wildly different people, both good and bad.

I think instead of doing some grand "creationist gods" thing or relic mcguffin plot, its the kind of world that requires the narrative to examine it as the story progresses - IS Remnant TRULY inclusive? HAVE the people in power REALLY done enough? Do people like Ozpin even SEE the true issues? How do various people living IN Remnant see Remnant? What do they want Remnant to be? Has the lead cast ever thought about the world beyond or what they'd want it to be? They want to be Huntsmen but has each of them truly thought what that word means for them? What CAN they truly do toward those goals? And is civilization that proclaims to want to change truly capable of it or is it doomed to burn again and again? It is after all what the show started with. Show the wider more complex world that is not as simple or clearcut as the more sheltered idealized academies.

#rwde #rwby #rwby au #rwby stuff mine

[queer-ragnelle]

My episode 3 thoughts are you won't believe how fucking gay I am for Morgan. She can do unethical magic on me anyday. Holy shit. I adore her. And I like this interpretation of Vivian! Very interesting. Excited to see more :)

Happy wedding day, Jennie! Hopefully nothing Bad happens in it

The women in this show in general are all very good. I'm very used to being let down by shows like these when it comes to the women dslkfjdf but they're handling all of them very well! Each has a very distinct personality (except for Ms. Ector, RIP queen you will never be forgotten), and they all have desires. They all have wants. It's honestly fascinating to watch their arcs progress, I'm so excited about it. And, of course, I'm so very gay for all of them.

The building of Camelot as the place of legend we know today, literally from ruin and dust, is FASCINATING. The people flock there desperately wanting to get help, Arthur barely knows how to handle them all, the gates are open for everyone... And they all stay INSIDE the castle walls still, there isn't a town forming around them. They barely have enough resources to rebuild everything, but they all hope so much for things to be better than they were. It's quite sweet.

Squints at whatever that scene with Merlin and Morgan was. I could find the deeper meaning in that for sure if I looked but I'm not going to look.

GAWAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MY BOY!!! WHAT A WRECK!

"...Lot's dead." Yeah.

I love this interpretation of Arthur, because they I can see the clear arc they're making with his character and I'm so excited for it, but also... You buffoon. You clown. You fool. And GODDAMN this show is horny, I was not expecting this lol

Sorry I have loving Gawain disease and it's terminal. Please return my books to the library if I don't get the chance by the time I finish this show because it will kill me.

Oh Jennie, my love, what a mess you've found yourself in. Don't worry. According to the 20 minutes of that last episode I watched by accident I know all will end well.

....I got distracted halfway through and started watching warrior cats maps and Darktail is basically Mordred but as a cat? sfjdskfl I haven't read up to that point but if what I've gathered from fandom is accurate then uh. Lmfao.

I'm sorry these are so long I just. Need to share my thoughts as I watch things with other people. It will happen again, until the end of the series. 7 more to go. Thank you again for the wonderful recommendation

i would absolutely believe how gay you are for morgan bc i am gay for her. eva green is my favorite ever. she was great in penny dreadful also. yeah i have to agree, kay's mom notwithstanding, everyone else feels fully realized. the point i try to make when discussing arthuriana is that having a female protag in a retelling does not automatically denote feminist, the story can still be incredibly misogynistic. but i don't get that from starz camelot, it truly stands apart in my eyes. it treats igraine, morgan, guinevere, etc with respect (regardless of morality, which is key, as morgan could easily be narratively abused to make a point about "evil" women while the men do whatever they want without consequence). each lady has equal narrative weight to merlin, arthur, kay, etc. its so refreshing. love the way they just piled everyone in without any long term plans. another thing i like about the writing here is it shows arthur is inexperienced without making him obnoxiously obtuse. he has no idea what he's doing but offers his good will to the people, yet they haven't got the infrastructure to see his vision realized. its naïve, not stupidity. which is important to keep us invested in him as a character! he is making mistakes, but they're not horror movie protag bad, so we stay engaged. he remains sympathetic. GAWAIN TIME!!!!! it only gets better.....he is so......unwell<3 every arthurian character is extremely varied so it's impossible to know whether darktail is reminiscent of mordred. its like "which mordred?" there are a million of that guy. he and gawain exist on a wild spectrum. there is a version of them for everyone. so darktail both is and isnt mordred. its beautiful really. don't apologize for long messages! you're talking to someone writing an arthurian epic bc a trilogy wasn't enough words for me. thank you for sharing your viewing experience. now everyone go watch this show.

#starz camelot #ask #arqueervist

[wellntruly]

RUSSIAN DOLL

Russian Doll Season 2---not that great---is honestly a gift to me personally, as now I am always going to have the perfect talking point for my perpetual position: STRUCTURE ABOVE ALL (in storytelling)

This is going to be an excuse to finally write at any length about Russian Doll Season 1, one of my favorite pieces of television, but it's going to be about 2 too, a remarkable instructional case that sets off in contrast so many of the things that make Season 1 a masterpiece of the medium. I actually understand better now what is so important to how Season 1 works, because of which elements Season 2 thought it could leave out, and it couldn’t! The post about making ratatouille.txt. Anyway there will be spoilers for the plots of both.

The main thing though, the most essential tomato in the sauce: Russian Doll Season 1 couldn’t be anything but television. If you ran it all together into one 3.5 hour watch, which many of us did, the story and rhythm is still completely distinguishable as eight distinct episodes, each with their own internal arc and tone that you can easily recall later---the episode where Nadia thinks the yeshiva is haunted, the episode where they’re going through Alan’s day together looking for clues, the episode about Nadia’s childhood trauma, et cetera. This was something I thought about a lot in 2019 when I first watched it, how it binged so well yet still has this nicely chaptered form. Like an album, co-creator Leslye Headland has described it, you can listen to the whole thing through but it’s composed of individual songs. This is a really good analogy. Another would be: like television. But in the era of streaming limited series that just formlessly run on to their end, often without even opening credits* to set off new episodes anymore, that classic television structure can be rarer and rarer to find. 

In fact, if you look ahead to just the next season of this show, you won’t find it! Russian Doll Season 2 is no longer a story built episode by episode, like building blocks that each contain their own kernel of color and meaning, it’s a concurrent & continuous narrative that has just been arbitrarily cut at about each 30 minute mark. You can tell by how this time, it is much more difficult to recall later which episode something happened in. Somehow the episode where we finally find out what Alan has been up to is also the episode where Nadia and Maxine go off to Budapest for like 36 hours---that should not happen! That is so befuddled! It’s something you might not pinpoint at the time, but this simple lack of internal episodic cohesion is absolutely a part of what makes this season feel more scattered and unsatisfying compared to the first one. 

It’s so interesting that it feels more jumbled, because on paper, Season 2 actually has a much more clear and specific topic it’s addressing, what it’s About, than Season 1 does, with its poetic, (theatrical), open-ended conclusion that just doubled down on letting everyone draw the takeaway that mattered most to them. No one is writing explainers this time of all the different themes, or self-effacingly airing their extremely niche pet theories about the Tompkins Square Park Riots that turn out to have something there. There’s no need: Season 2 is expressly about inherited trauma, all roads lead to Rome (or the past, rather). Yet by the time this journey wraps up, what is the impact of this new season? Rather less? The widely middling reviews and near entire lack of Season 2 on my dash when everyone had been posting about Season 1, all seem to indicate yeah, less. 

What I think these two seasons demonstrate so well is that the power of narrative art forms often depends less on just what their ideas are, than how those ideas are being conveyed, what storytelling methods are being used to get at them. The interests of this season are absolutely of a piece with the first, in fact I think most of it was first brought up in the scene where Nadia and Alan are getting drunk at the bar. He mumbles that her necklace is pretty, and she lays out this history of her family fleeing the Holocaust and the story of the gold coins and how her ill mother in her delusions lost them, all but one, and she’s blithe and sad and drunk, not as drunk as Alan but in keeping with him, her eyes are a little bright and she’s feeling confessional and shocking, and it’s so powerful. There is so much in this inter-generational tragedy to delve into, and Season 2 is doing that! It’s about these things and these characters we were already invested in, this should be great, so why does it fall flat when we’re actually watching it? STRUCTURE.

Okay, so these two seasons are basically going about themselves from opposite directions: 

Season 1 is structure-led: it sets up a framework (death time loop), and the characters are set loose to quite literally batter themselves against it in an attempt to find meaning (each other) (healing) (self-peace). Our two protagonists are constrained at nearly every turn by this shape the show has place placed them in, yet the sparks of their humanity bumping into it creates some of the brightest parts---the amount of revealing Maxine & Lizzy moments that come from Nadia refusing to leave via the stairs after episode two; Alan hurriedly telling a gasping Nadia where he’ll meet her if they’re dying as blood starts to trickle out of his ear; the fucking song. (*Oh we’ll come back to this!) 

Season 2, meanwhile, has a different starting point: it sets up a discussion topic, and pretends to have a new structure (time train), but from the very beginning, the rules of the 6 train change depending on whatever the story wants to be about at that moment---it’s story-led, 100%. Season 1 was beholden to its form, to the point of occasionally feeling like both we and the characters were trapped in one of Nadia’s video games. Season 2 is not actually constrained by any form at all, but instead of this freedom letting the show burn brighter, we lost those edges to spark against. Everything ended up feeling more diffuse and watery, until our lead characters were literally wading through it. Notably: apart. (We’ll get to this too!) 

Season 1 tells a story that can be understood to be about a lot of different things, in a setting that is so wonderfully specifically one thing---culturally, geographically, calender-ly. Season 2 tells a story clearly understood to be about one thing, in a setting that now includes three different cities, four different time periods, and eventually a sort of collapsing multiverse of timelines. They’re opposites!

And I think I have an idea of why one (1) works better. We're going briefly to the stage, actually. (Hang with me!)

In an interview on the Little Gold Men podcast about his adaptation of Tick, Tick...BOOM!, Lin Manuel Miranda said something that caused me to say for the second time (the first time was when I was watching Tick, Tick...BOOM!), “Aw man, you’re a good director.” What he said he was this:

“Yes, the musical theater truism of the opening number establishing the rules of the world, is important. You have to tell the audience how to experience this show, and how does the singing work, and what are we watching. But I also learned on Hamilton that every number is an opportunity to renegotiate that relationship, and crack it open a little more and bend the rules here. […] Establishing all those rules with every song and pushing on those rules, so that by the time we get to the end of the show, we can literally stop time.” 

As a nerd for structure, this really spoke to me. Sure it’s initially about musical theater, a unique medium with its own tool set, but it also applies perfectly to a season of television like Russian Doll Season 1, where instead of each song, it’s each restart of the time loop that is an opportunity to re-establish the rules while also pressing on them.

Speaking of songs! Let’s get to this now: the diegetic music cue of Harry Nilsson’s ‘Gotta Get Up’ playing on each restart is such a stroke of genius. On one level, it let them hack the no-credits format of Netflix’s recent years---it’s now the credits song! It signifies one little narrative close and the start of a new one! We’re humans, we love patterns, and we also love when patterns alter in satisfying ways. Studies on people who experience frisson, goosebumps while listening to music or even just watching or reading a narrative, have found that it usually comes at key pattern moments, either when the current pattern breaks, or when it reforms into a pattern from earlier. The same ‘Gotta Get Up’ track playing from the same exact spot every single time was a thrill of repetition, but ALSO an incredible barometer for how the show was making us feel at that moment, as the song’s tone would almost seem to alter as we went on. Sometimes it would feel more manic, other times more ominous, others more hilarious, more moribund, more surreal. It’s so eerie when it’s playing in Maxine’s now fully empty apartment, and so joyous when it’s playing and everyone’s back. 

Because Russian Doll Season 1 is perfectly following that musical theater adage. As Lin would have it, each 'song' (each restart): an opportunity. Season 1 is miles more rule-bound than Season 2, but that doesn’t make it static at all. In fact, it’s continuously using what we know of the structure to reveal new things to us, either by something’s sudden absence or sudden appearance in what we had grown to think of as a sealed loop. Paradoxically, each time we learn another rule, the world expands.

Most importantly, indelibly: the end of the third episode---

Nadia: "Hey man, didn't you get the news? We're about to die." This guy in the elevator: "It doesn't matter, I die all the time."

Fun fact, so I get frisson? I got frisson just now simply thinking about this moment. IT’S PERFECT TELEVISION WRITING. It feels WILD, it’s SO surprising, but it’s also not actually breaking our rules at all, it’s simply revealing to us a new person who is also subject to them. And we didn’t know!! The panic over “spoilers” that has grown up in recent years is, I think, rather overblown, but I will say that’s one thing about Netflix keeping Russian Doll a secret and just dumping “a new Natasha Lyonne show” on everyone with no warning one week in February 2019: we didn’t even know there was a second lead character. If I had seen even a single still of Charlie Barnett before watching it, I didn’t remember. Top ten TV moments of my life!! And that we KNEW the next episode was going to start with him looking into a mirror, you just knew it! That predictive joy of pattern & surprise!

And then the existence of Alan immediately offers so much. For starters, someone for grousing, gravelly Natasha Lyonne to play off of (wonderful), but what I think I might find most moving is the discovery that bears down on you the minute we start that next episode---'Alan’s Routine', it is tellingly titled---that oh, oh he is trying to handle this completely differently. I know I keep saying similar things, but it’s my refrain: it’s the structure that is allowing us to so quickly get this depth of characterization, and a deeper understanding of Nadia as well, just through their differing responses to the same time loop. It’s so important to what that season is trying to do with its central existential pondering that this be happening to them in the same way, but because of who they are as people and the circumstances of their personal histories, they’ve each started to build up a totally different mythos of how and why it works (god, god, it’s so good).

But then in Season 2, we actually barely get Alan at all, and even when we do they're quite cordoned off from each other. I love Alan and missed him, but it's not just that---I love them together. Nadia sets off Alan at his best angles; Alan sets off Nadia at her best angles. I really think another part of what makes the developments of this season feel oddly skimmed over sometimes is that neither of them has the other there to question and comment and collaborate. Imagine Alan providing cover for Nadia, heist-style, as she slips into that Budapest auction house basement, and then supporting her with the emotional weight of what she finds there. Imagine Nadia's reaction to Alan's reaction to getting catcalled by Stasi officers who see him as his young grandmother.

I do think that even without the unavoidable comparison with the story of connection that had come before, the writing of this season would have still felt disjointed between them, Alan’s unrelated Berlin B-plot tacked on to the clear A-narrative of Nadia and the krugerrands. Sure, stories don’t always have to have the fates of the characters intertwined to be moving, but it generally makes for more rewarding experiences when there are these thematic echoes, these exchanges between people, when they change each other. Part of the beauty of that first season of Russian Doll was that as it went on, we all began to realize, Nadia and Alan too, that it was only going to be through helping each other that they were going to be in less pain. I don't know if I can save myself, but perhaps I can save you. It’s lovely.

Season 2 is more of an individual journey. It’s basically Nadia and Alan now doing work on themselves, on their own. It is a stepping back from where Season 1 ended, or maybe a step inward I mean? And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, just as I don't think that every story has to be highly structured to be any good (of course not!), but I do think that more loosely organized individualism can be harder to manage from a storytelling perspective. It can, as this second season does, tend toward meandering. It can, as this season does, lose awareness of rhythm. Those patterns, building and breaking and reforming. Those constraints that create beauty. Season 2 cut itself loose from form, when it needed structure more than ever.

But hey, it really did make me fall even more in love with that first season, and I don't know if I would have thought that was possible.

#Tarra watches #Russian Doll #storytelling #Natasha Lyonne #Leslye Headland #Amy Poehler

[tentacleteapot]

when I was in college I was very fond of tossing around the phrase “a good zombie movie is like a sonnet”. it sounded clever, made me feel like I’d figured out something profound about storytelling, and it sometimes made people curious enough to ask me to elaborate, which allowed me to get to my actual point, which is as follows: I think it’s silly at best and irresponsible or ignorant at worst to write off all works of a specific genre or medium as inherently bad or worthless.

there are specific genres and mediums that are more or less interesting than others depending on your individual tastes, of course, and there are specific genre ‘rules’ or accepted genre staples that either really work for you or really don’t, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to say all art that belongs to a specific genre or comes from a specific medium is bad or not worth someone’s time.

when I say a good zombie movie is like a sonnet, I’m actually focused more on what I like about sonnets than what I like about zombie movies: I love seeing how creative somebody can be within the confines of a specific genre, and how a good storyteller can utilize standard genre conventions to do something unique and compelling. I think any form of writing that follows a rigid structure and still manages to tell a unique and fascinating story or convey an engaging and compelling message is worth appreciating, even if it’s in a genre I’m not drawn to, and the more I explore new anime, film, western animation, and all other fictional narratives the more I realize that the genre of a thing really doesn’t determine if I’ll like it or not: I just have to be interested in the ideas it presents and how the characters react to and are affected by the narrative itself.

circling back, the reason I used to use zombie movies in this analogy is because I’d just exited my big zombie phase when I started college and had watched dozens of zombie movies, going back to my favorites and revisiting them over and over again, and appreciating how they all followed the exact same formula but the ones that I really enjoyed found ways to make the formula interesting or put a unique spin on it. if I were to have that realization now, I’d probably have to ‘modernize’ it and say that good superhero movies feel like sonnets to me—movies like Birds of Prey or Into the Spider-Verse are pieces of media that do extremely unique and interesting things with the same building blocks as movies like The Avengers or the original Suicide Squad, two movies I have no interest in ever watching again and don’t enjoy talking or thinking about.

I’m thinking about this as I examine my own taste in media and think about how sometimes I feel like I have to defend the movies I like most, because so many of the movies I really love are either from genres outsiders refuse to take seriously or are weird ‘bad’ movies that white cis guys on YouTube have been saying are cringey and childish for the last couple decades now. I think the reason my movie tastes are so weird but that I also throw myself wholeheartedly into adoring the movies that really do something for me is because ultimately I still most enjoy seeing the creativity that some artists almost magically seem to always find within a very rigid structure.

it takes sincerity and earnest intent to make a movie that follows and incorporates genre cliches in ways that feel earned and genuine and creative, rather than mocking or ‘deconstructive’ or ‘subversive’, and i just really respect that. admittedly it makes for really awkward conversations when I try to show somebody a movie I love and it’s something they think is really corny or childish or cliched, which is why I often don’t actively engage with fandoms or talk about the movies I love outside a few very close circles, but I am at least happy I’ve been able to identify where that love comes from. I’ve been really trying to embrace sincerity and earnestness more and more over the last decade or so and it’s lead to my enjoying so many more things I would’ve never given a chance to otherwise, so at the end of the day I’m glad for it, honestly.

#long post #daphne.txt #this is one long boring ramble and I’m sorry. it doesn’t have any sort of point #I’m just ruminating

[ellesliterarycorner]

hello :D do you have any tips on how to drop info without info dumping?

Hi, anon! I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to get to your ask! Info-dumps are definitely some of the hardest things about writing, and I have always struggled with finding the balances between giving your readers necessary information and info-dumping things that are completely irrelevant to the plot. For anyone who doesn't know an info-dump is whenever an author gives a very long exposition either in the narrative or through dialogue, just dumping all of the information on the reader instead of weaving it through the story. One thing to keep in mind though: Info-dumps can be extremely subjective. Some things that I considered reasonable world-building, some of my friends have thoughts were terrible info-dumps, so definitely keep that in mind, and not all info-dumps are bad. Sometimes they're necessary for the story, so here's how to drop info in correctly.

Ah, Those Villain Monologues

Unfortunately, these days it’s not just villains who are monologuing. Everyone from heroes to villains has decided that right in the heal of battle that its their new favorite pastime. One way I often see authors disguise an info-dump monologue is by having a character tell another character a story of some important historical event, but it’s still an info-dump, unfortunately. You can make a monologue work in your story, and there are certain book monologues that I actually do enjoy. BUT, having more than one info-dumpy monologue in your story probably isn’t a good thing. They will inevitably bore your reader, and the information may not even get across in the way you imagined it. Plus, realistically, how often do people monologue in real life? Not every often. If you really need to get all the info across in a specific point in your story in dialogue form, a conversation between two or more characters can probably get the job done in the same way and will probably be more way more engaging for your reader! Also, a conversation can allow you to reveal characterization and the relationship between your characters which will advance the story even further!

But Is This Relevant??

You would be shocked at how many info-dumps I read that are not at all relevant to the story, or ones that are relevant, but are simply out of place. Info-dumps like these pull the reader out of the story. It can mess up your pacing and make you lose any momentum you have in the story. For example, even though descriptions are important and setting a surrounding for your readers is good, stopping in the middle of a fight scene to describe the dungeons your characters are fighting in is probably counterintuitive. To remedy this, evaluate all the info in a scene, within the context of the scene. A description of the dungeon, from my above example would be helpful to create visualization for the fight scene, but dumping that info at the top of the scene before the fight starts would be much more beneficial. If you need to dump a little bit of information, make it related to whatever is happening in the story. Readers are more likely to forgive an info-dump that relates to the current happenings of the story and that help them understand it.

Weave The Info Throughout The Story

Information in a story to me is like ranch on top of a salad. Bear with me here. Most people don't want to dump the ranch on their salad all in one spot. Most people nicely drizzle the ranch over their salad, making sure that the whole bowl gets the ranchy goodness. That was a weird analogy, but I hope it helped illustrate my point. Dumping all of the info at one point in your story serves no good, especially if it's info that foreshadows an event or plot twist. Drizzling the detail throughout the story is a much better, more enjoyable option. This can hard, so I actually would recommend writing a big chunk of information that you want to share about a current event. Then, break up the big blocks into smaller parts and look for places where you can stretch it out across the story! This helps you know what info you want to share while also making sure that you're not info-dumping it.

Elle's Bonus Tip: Check the Starts

Just like animals prefer certain climates, info-dumps prefer the starts of things. The first chapter, the first time you meet a new character, the first time your character visits a new place. If you go back through your story, those are all of the most common places for info-dumps to make their home. It's natural for writers to want to explain every little detail about a new character or a new place because we think that information is necessary. And while the reader shouldn't be left in the dark, they probably don't need all of the information that's inside of your head on their first time seeing a place or meting a character. You want readers to be intrigued enough to turn the page, and not dumping info and giving them just enough to keep going is the perfect place to do it.

#writing tips #writers on tumblr #writing tip #writing advice #writers #writing #writersofig #writers of instagram #writers of ig #writersofinstagram #creative writing #writing resource #writing reference #writing resources